RSS
Home
Is there a vast right wing conspiracy against Obama?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
When Bill Clinton was president, his wife Hillary, now secretary of state, suggested that there was a vast right wing conspiracy operating against him. If we assume that her claim was correct, is such a conspiracy now aimed against President Barack Obama?
Right wing Republicans never forgave Clinton for being elected president and appear to have the same attitude towards Obama. Then as now, it seems that these right wingers operate in lockstep, with the same talking points continually repeated by conservative talk radio, the Fox News Channel and Republican politicians. These partisan attacks show no regard for the truth, as in the false "death panels" claim regarding health care reform. At the same time, we never seem to hear any dissent in the conservative ranks or any apologies when claims are proved false.
The vicious hatred towards Obama now and Clinton then has been personal as well as political. Clinton was falsely accused of murder in the suicide of White House aide Vince Foster. Birther wackos have falsely claimed that Obama wasn't born in the U.S., while some health care reform opponents have compared Obama to Hitler.
Some of the attacks on Obama have been racist. Glenn Beck made the absurd claim that Obama hates white people, deliberately ignoring the fact that Obama is in fact half-white. Did Obama hate his white mother and the white grandparents who raised him for a good part of his childhood? Of course not. This was in fact a dishonest attempt by Beck to stir hatred against Obama along racial lines and suggests that it is Beck who is the racist.
Any attempts at bipartisan reconciliation are ignored by the right wingers. While Clinton pushed through NAFTA and changes in welfare laws with almost unanimous support from congressional Republicans, we never heard conservatives give him any credit. When Obama sought Republican input on health care reform, he got little more than stony silence in response.
If there is a right wing conspiracy, it shows no concept of the public interest, epitomized by Rush Limbaugh's hope that Obama fails. Many Republicans who oppose health care reform deny that the U.S. health care system is broken, just as many who oppose the energy bill deny that global warming exists. For them, the interests of insurance, oil and coal companies reign supreme over the public good.
Of course, there are right wingers who claim that former President George W. Bush got the same treatment from progressives, which is far from the truth. The majority of Democratic senators voted to authorize force against Iraq and there was plenty of bipartisan cooperation in passing the No Child Left Behind Act. When it turned out that Bush had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, we didn't hear any Democratic politicians or pundits call him a mass murderer for launching a war on false premises.
People can disagree on politics but still see admirable qualities in each other. If any conservatives are reading this, can you think of anything nice to say about Obama?
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
